


the weight of wings

by Eosithe



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe, Attempted Sexual Assault, F/M, Gen, Here's to hoping I get better at tags, It's about the journey, Keeping house isn’t that fun when you’re the Sun Summoner, all the feelings, alternate everything, short one shots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-06 07:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13406481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eosithe/pseuds/Eosithe
Summary: In different times, in different places, Alina and Aleksander meet again and again.  As the sum of a lifetime(s) of choices, their story is never the same twice.Snapshots of a thousand lives not lived.





	1. Closer.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a collection of short one shots, of varying length, exploring how the story of Alina and the Darkling might be different if one (or a few) thing was different; they come in matched pairs. I have 6 planned out right now, but am open to (and looking for?) prompts!
> 
> These came to me as I was reading the books, so some of them don't look ahead to the end of the series.
> 
> If there's enough interest, some of them could be elaborated into a short multi-chapter fic. If someone wants to take one of these and run with it, also definitely a possibility (holla at me in the comments).

Alina is born not into a family of _Dva Stolba_ , but one in the heart of Ravka.  Tsarevna Alina Alexandrovna Lantsov is held first by the midwife, then her mother, before being passed into the cautious hands of her brother Nikolai.

 

On her 5th birthday, she undergoes the perfunctory Examination.  No one in the known history of the Lantsov line has been Grisha, but the Royal family is still a Ravkan family, and all Ravkans are Examined.  It's a solemn, ceremonial affair conducted by the Commander of the Second Army, the man draped in a black _kefta_ , who kneels in front of his _tsarevna_ , head bowed, and humbly holds out his hand for her to take.

 

(Kolya's voice echoes in her head: _It is alright, Linechka, if nothing happens at your Examination today. Neither Vasya nor I felt the call, and nobody thought any less of us for it_.)

 

When she places her small hand in his, though, _like calls to like_ and his eyes snap up to meet hers; the room was quiet before, but now there is an absolute void of noise. The Darkling gestures, and a table prepared more out of ceremony than for anticipated use is wheeled out to the pair in the center of the room.

 

He guides her through trying to manipulate flesh, trying to control water, wind, fire, trying to alter baser elements. Normally such a trial is conducted in private, but Grisha _tsarevnas_ are not normal, and for all her wealth and privilege, she cannot afford this small luxury. He next calls on his own shadows, and has her test her hand with them, but still her power does not manifest. Finally, he envelopes the two of them in a shroud of darkness. The crowd gasps as shadows flicker across the floor, heeding the call of their master, and the guards step forward as the Tsar and Tsaritsa object.

 

But in as much time as it took to call the shadows, they're dispelled by a little girl who throws rays of sunshine and radiates with an incandescent light only seen now that she stands in the shadow of the man next to her. The murmurs of the crowd have an undertone of religion, of _Sankta_ , and Alina, seeming to remember that she is all but five years old, looks for Nikolai, her _sobachka_ , and begins to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my head this continues and becomes a massive debate about how she's educated and trained, how she's kept safe (royal + sun-summoner = high profile target), how she fulfills her military service, who she marries, etc. She’s so inaccesible to him in this situation-I’d love to play around with how he changes his strategy to adapt.
> 
> Notes:  
> 1\. Tsarevna = daughter of the Tsar, or wife of the Tsarevich  
> 2\. In most monarchies, non-royals must wait to be touched by the member of the royal family.  
> 3\. Kolya is a nickname for Nikolai  
> 4\. Linechka is my best guess at how a dimunitive pet-name for Alina might turn out.


	2. Under.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I like to think I know everything that happens in Ravka, and that if I had a Sun Summoner living in my own country, I'd be aware of it." 
> 
> Shadow & Bone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief mention of attempted sexual assault. 
> 
> Previously titled 'Farther.'

Alina is born and orphaned in a village of the _Dva Stolba_ valley, along the Fjerda-Ravka border and, in the light of a victorious Fjerdan military campaign, grows up saying _Skirden Fjerda_ rather than _Dlya Ravka_.

 

Whisked to the heart of Fjerda ('to discourage sentimental attachments to that heathen land', she'd heard), she grows up in an orphanage for Children of the War.  There is no abuse, she muses, but there is no love either, and days are full of hefty helpings of duty and religion to supplement the unhefty helpings of food.  She's a good girl, goes to church, knows that witches are evil, abominations, not natural and not worthy of her sympathy.  Witches are good for fueling pyres, and that's about it.

 

So she carries on with her duty and her religion until she's 18 and duty and religion abandon her to fend for herself.  Penniless and unmarried, she rents a room in a girls' boarding house while working on the other side of the city.  Her daily walk takes her through a respectable working neighborhood, where she tries to attract the attention of a handsome butcher's apprentice, and a seedier area, where she tries to attract no attention at all.

 

Her luck in escaping notice runs out on the night of a new moon, when a man too deep in his cups to tell right from wrong drags her into the dark heart of an alley.  He asks for things she is not willing to give, and decides, hand over her mouth, to take them regardless.  _Saints, please help me!  If someone could see us here, they would stop him_ she thinks, still naïve to the ways of the world and the people in it, who would rather turn a blind eye on a well-lit alley than bother themselves to help a mouse.

 

The man, fed up with her struggles, slams her head against a wall and she sees stars.  But the stars continue after the initial snap of pain, and she opens her eyes to find herself surrounded by light, bright and comforting to her, but blinding to her assailant, who steps back.  It extinguishes immediately.

 

"Witch," the man murmurs, eyes wide with fear but hands stretching out to grab her.  The light and the drink have rendered him uncoordinated enough, though, and once his hands are off her, she decides she does not want them back.

 

She kicks him in the shin, and runs.

 

She runs to the nearest city gate, aware of the commotion she has left in her wake, the shouts of _witch!_ that dog her every step, every turn, every stumble, and leaves.  She runs as fast and as far as she can, until her knees give out under her and she tumbles to rest against a tree.  The next day she moves on, eyes ahead but ears behind, waiting for the sound of the mob.  At night, she retreats deep into the forest and, paranoid of every sylvan sound, strains to coax the smallest orb of light to her palms.

 

She had felt it, in that alley: the unsupressable swelling of _something_ within her in response to her muffled plea for help.  It felt like salvation when it poured out then; it feels a lot like damnation when she summons it now.  She snuffs the light out, huddles down, and fails miserably to rest.

 

She walks on, and dare not summon until 8 days later, when abject anguish prompts her to call upon her sun for some warmth.  She feels comfort, but also shame, the condemnation of priests echoing across the chasm between her previous and present lives.  And so she continues a cycle of repression and caving, each cycle getting shorter, each summoning increasing her control until she finds herself in a new village, ready to start over.

 

She lives and works and is careful about her secret until one day it's 10 years later and there are whispers about why a woman who works the fields, in the sun, doesn't age, doesn't wrinkle like the younger women who work with her.  With both regret and fear in her heart, she moves on and starts over, a third time.

 

Her next village is unintentionally close to the border with Ravka, and when she realizes it, she searches for traces of a time before _Skirden Fjerda_ in the land around her, but doesn't find it.  When men flying the golden double eagle break like a wave upon the town 12 years later, she flees, grateful for the easy truth she'll tell when she arrives in her next new home.  On her way out, she is passed by a dark man on a dark horse, with a face carved from marble and eyes like moonlight on a cold winter night. She had heard of the ruthless Grisha leader of the Ravkan army, and wonders if this is him.

 

And she thought maybe she was just very healthy, just blessed with a good lineage, but when 40 more years and 6 more villages have passed her by and she looks in the mirror and sees no change from the age when her heart wanted a butcher's apprentice, feels no ache in her joints like she hears she should, she knows she is different from other people.  Terribly, irrevocably different, and she wants to scream out, wants to purify herself of this curse, wants to cleanse herself of this _loneliness_ she knows she will never shed.

 

More years pass and she wears desolation like a second skin, as accustomed to it as she is her sunlight (they are her only constants), and she finds herself in Halmhend.  The Skuggskärning is nearby, the Shadow Fold, where stories are told of those that enter and don't return, stories of those who hear the wings of nightmares and screams of those abandoned to the darkness.

 

Alina doesn't fear the dark, though, hasn't since a night in an alley long since passed, and Halmhend, she thinks, is a city big enough to lose herself in for a while.  She is tired of constantly moving and longs to know what home feels like.  But Halmhend is not big enough, she realizes, when the woman who's bakery she worked in 30 years prior appears in the door of her embroidery shop, stops, and calls her by a name she gave up a decade ago.

 

The instinct is still there though, and when she answers without first looking up, the baker stares in shock, then horror at a face that hasn't changed, and the only thing Alina fears tumbles out of her mouth.

 

" _Witch._ "  Softly, at first, but then repeated, and louder, until the cry reverberates down the street, calling the cityfolk just as surely as church bells to mass.

 

There is no time to gather her things.  She runs out the back door, down a side street, dodging people and animals alike.  She hides in the basement of another like her, whom she discovered creating ripples in the public fountain late one night and decided to teach.  The call to arms rings out throughout the city, though, and she thinks about her life, the past and what lies ahead, while crouching in a cramped cupboard, and makes the decision to leave.

 

She slips out in the night, careful to not reveal who gave her refuge, and heads west.  A search party spots her a few miles away from the city wall, and an unlucky arrow pierces her shoulder after she fails to halt at their request.  Light pours from her every pore in angry response to her pain and for a moment, midnight becomes noon.  She runs towards the only shelter she has left, the Fold, where none but she who does not fear the dark dare go.  She enters, and her pursuers do not.

 

She walks, for how long, she cannot tell.  Without the rhythmic rising and falling of the sun, time has no pattern.  It might have been hours, it might have been days before she first hears the whisper of wind under wing.  That pattern, though can change, and does, when she _feels_ the wind too.  Casting her light wide, a creature, volcra she later learns, shrieks and retreats.  It's the most hideous, monstrous thing she's ever seen, the mirror image of dark hearts of hateful men, and she works hard to maintain her sphere of illumination as the gray sands shift restlessly beneath her feet.

 

When she stumbles out the other side, having seen the ravaged corpses of men and strange ships alike, she is picked up by a Ravkan military patrol and taken to Arkesk.

 

Her unaccented Ravkan, last used when she lived in that village on the border, convinces them that she is not a Fjerdan spy, but they remain unconvinced by her story of wandering down the edge of the Fold from the forest that marks the border between the two countries. She thinks of the bones she stepped over in that dark place, and does not mention _which_ edge of the Fold.

 

In time, she is released, and in more time, she makes her way to Novokribirsk.  She teams with a Squaller who promises to keep her secret, for though Grisha are common in Ravka, those who summon light are not, and the two make a name as the most successful movers of cargo across the Fold.  Grisha are not persecuted here, Alina marvels, but these Grisha still age and she eventually moves on again.

 

During her travels, she hears more of the Darkling, the Commander of the Second Army, Leader of Grisha, he who wears shadows like a cloak, and wonders about him: it had been long ago that she heard of him in Fjerda, long enough that she begins to wonder _'maybe'_.

 

Thirty years later she finally meets him.  She returned to the Unsea, paired with another Squaller (the first, she learns with regret, died in an attack on the Fold shortly after she left, like all of the others she had known before), and was building a new business when the military encampment came to life.  She had been less than scrupulous since leaving the Fold, feeling more free to practice her summoning, and word had made its way back to Os Alta about the woman to whom light, when called, answers.  The Darkling wants to meet her, she's told, though when she has a military escort the likes of which surround her, 'wants' sound uncannily like 'demands'.

 

And then he's there, sitting on his throne of ebony, the planes of his face the same as she saw them in a past century, eyes still like moonlight off snow.  She admits to herself that she didn't see him for very long, on that day long ago, wasn’t very close (though close enough to know the color of his eyes), but he sits in his chair with the same haughty airs that he gave off sitting on his black charger then.  Few men could make their faces seem disinterested when their eyes are so intense, she thinks. _Like calls to like_ , she's heard often enough since she moved to Ravka, and she wonders if she hears that call now, or if it's just the echo of false hope ringing through her lonely heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vaguely inspired by the quote at the top. 'Under' comes from the idea: what if the Dva Stolba valley fell under Fjerdan control?
> 
> Alina is obviously a pretty stubborn character: I used this as the basis for her not leaving Fjerda much earlier than she did. One thing I felt while reading the books is that she's just so young; the story would play out so differently if she were even 5-10 years older (which was actually the basis for this whole series: how would things changed if one thing got tweaked). I wanted to age her up, and give her a taste of that loneliness and oppression before getting to Ravka and seeing the fruits of his labors there.
> 
> If any of you have an idea of a prompt for one of these, I'd love to hear it! And this might be one that turns into a more complete fic.
> 
> Notes:  
> 1\. Dlya Ravka - 'for Ravka', I'm assuming Skirden Fjerda is some kind of 'For Fjerda' equivalent.  
> 2\. Skuggskärning - Swedish for Shadow Rift. My thought on what 'Shadow Fold' might be in Fjerdan.


	3. After.

Alina Starkov, at 17, killed the Darkling, her own power and her last chance at peace with a single thrust of a knife.  She lived, loved, aged and, until her last day, kept a man with shadows in his heart alive in her own.  He had sullied her, she feared (hoped) - his Night a stain across her skin that she could not, would not, did not want to get out.

 

" _You might make me a better man_ ," his ghost whispers to her some nights.  _In our next life_ , she threatens, _I promise you I will_.  Her dreams have become her refuge, the only place she can feel the soft warmth of her light, the only place she can see him.  She dreaded his visits once; she resents his absence now.  Mal never asks why she sometimes stares into the shadows in the corners of their house.  She never offers an explanation.

 

Over the years, malcontent spreads honey-thick under her skin, hard to ignore, harder to get rid of, and she curses that man for making her want _more_ , but says nothing, does nothing, because she knows how easy it would be to become like him, now that she is at the beginning of understanding.  Once, she was filled with the surety of her powers when he held her hand, touched her face, kissed her lips.  The certainty of _purpose_ is the shade he has left behind: it weighs heavy at her throat, on her wrist, even in her hair, and she fights it, fights him (she can hardly remember a time when she wasn't fighting him - why give up now?  Fighting him means he hasn't left her alone, not really).  She thinks of two thrones on a raised dais, one not more prominent than the other.  She tells herself that maybe he infected her with the singularity of his drive.  She hesitates to admit that maybe she carved a piece out of his ambition and kept it for herself.

 

Mal has been dead for two decades, leaving her to her thoughts for far too long, thoughts of regret and needing to make the sacrifices worth the love she was so certain she felt for him.  Yet she walks the halls of the Grand Palace as an advisor to _Tsar Lantsov_ , finds herself railing against walls that, in another life, with a different choice, would not be there.  Genya comments once that she must miss him, looking so lost and so angry, and Alina replies with a sharp _No._

 

“He made us _miserable_ , he _hunted_ us, he wanted to _own_ me.  Why would I miss him?”

 

Genya’s perpetually beautiful face morphs from sympathetic concern to empathetic understanding, and she envelopes Alina in a hug. 

 

“It’s alright, you know.  He did many terrible things, but he also made us who we are, and, in his own way, he deserves to be missed.”  Genya has much practice accepting the twisted intricacies of being human.  Alina has a decidedly harder time.

 

“But I _don’t!_ ”

 

“You're the one who assumed I was talking about the Darkling,” Genya counters, and Alina permits herself to collapse into the arms of her best friend.  “It’s _alright_ to miss him, Alina," she emphasizes. "You two had - " Genya searches for just _what_ , exactly, they had, but no explanation quite suffices.  "Just - you were a living saint.  Don’t become a living ghost too.”  At the end, Alina doesn't think she can say she succeeded.

 

Mal has only been dead for two decades when her time comes, and she dies with a name that is not her husband's on her lips.  She is found with a knucklebone wrapped in her fist, a relic for which she no longer had use, not even in life; they couldn't unfurl her fingers to get it out, and so she is buried with it.

 

With that final whisper, the last person who knew the name Aleksander Morozova passes, and he finally passes with her.

 

But life and death exist in a never ending chase, in _balance_ , and on the 300th anniversary of the death of _Sankta Alina_ , two children are born unto Ravka.  On the coast by the True Sea (though, without an Unsea, the memory of the people has faded, and few could recall the origin of such a name), a boy with golden brown hair and golden brown eyes screams, crying out in joyous life.  In the foothills of a mountain that used to be taller, a girl with hair of midnight and mercury eyes suckles at the breast of her mother.  She had not cried out, has hardly made a noise, and her mother's brow furrows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my heartcanon, Alina finds that she can't settle down. The Darkling once told her, ""I've given you power beyond all dreaming, and you can't wait to run off and keep house for your tracker," and like...wow I bet she’d be content with that for like, a week. Soldiers have a hard time readjusting to civilian life after tours of combat duty; I imagine that it's about 10,000X worse for someone who's both lost her power, her villain and her purpose. Quite frankly, the country doesn't really need her anymore, and that's a rough adjustment. And so she’s angry with him for revealing this side of her (the echoes of this are first seen in Seige and Storm, when she’s in Novyi Zem) and angry at herself for having this side of her and angry at him for being gone and angry at herself for having killed him and-you get it.
> 
> I also love the idea of the Darkling/Sun Summoner existing in a cyclical nature. Day and Night come and go - I'm sure I'll come up with some better explanation about why a repetitive history is possible (also in Shadow and Bone: 'There are stories-' (Chapter 3)).
> 
> The idea of Aleksander not fully passing until she died is based of a story I heard from NPR's Radiolab (Metamorphosis, by David Eagleman): http://www.radiolab.org/story/91680-after-life/.
> 
> ((and yes I was implying that she resents marrying Mal, that she might have been _Tsaritsa_ , and yes I'm implying that she took a finger from Aleksander as an amplifier/relic))


	4. Earlier.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I've given you power beyond all dreaming, and you can't wait to run off and keep house for your tracker."  
> Shadow & Bone, Chapter 21.

i.

 

"Is this it?" she asks.  Mal looks up from the table where he sits, skinning rabbits.  She really wishes he'd do that outside - it stinks - but it _is_ snowing hard, like it always does in the mountains of eastern Ravka, and she does not banish him to the cold.

 

"Is what it?"

 

"This," she gestures around.  "This _life_.  Staying here while you go out, cooking your dinners and sweeping your floors - "

 

"Our floors.  This is _our_ house, Alina."  He doesn't understand.  She supposes he wouldn't: he had gone from tracking to running, back to tracking, while she had developed from nascent cartographer to a woman hunted, who now finds herself a housewife.  'Home' is as much a matter of _who_ you are as _where_ you are, and she's not sure she likes either, right now.

 

"Is it?  It doesn't feel like home, Mal.  Home is somewhere you're excited to return to at the end of a long day, but I never leave this house in the first place." She sighs, "what am I doing, Mal?"

 

"I thought I was your home?  I thought this was what you wanted?"

 

"I thought so too."  She stares at nothing, at anything but him.  "Now, I'm not so sure."  She's not sure which question she's answering, if she's being honest, which apparently she is.  The light in the room gains weight, feels out the planes and curves of everything within the room, _looking_ but uncertain about what it wants to find.

 

This same light was what sparked all her problems.  It had burst forth from her at 17, during an attack on her military camp along the Fjerdan border.  She remembers the enemy raising his arm for the kill, knife dripping with the blood of the Senior Cartographer.  She remembers a bright light, and the immolated ashes of the man with a lump of melted metal that used to be his weapon.  A silence had descended over the camp then, a disquieting hush transcending the raucous cacophony of battle.  And so began her life as a _Grisha_ , an abomination to be rooted out and purified by fire. _Otkazat'sya_ were those abandoned, Grisha said; Alina wondered which group was truly the abandoned.

 

Mal sighs.  "Give it time.  We've been on the run for so long, you just haven't adjusted yet."

 

"Alright," another sigh, "I'll try."

 

But she tries for 10 years and she's just as restless, just as _home_ less, and just as she's starting to notice gray in his hair that she cannot find in hers, wrinkles around his eyes that do not appear around her own, she leaves.

 

Mal is asleep as she kisses him a final time, and his lips taste like the _kvas_ he drank last night; she thinks it might be the taste of confirmation, if she's honest, which apparently she is, in this moment of endings and beginnings.  It's the most honest she's been with herself in a long time.  He is neither what she wants nor needs, hasn't been for a while, and she tells herself that her unhappiness has made him unhappy, in an attempt to assuage the guilt.  Not guilt for leaving him: no, that was bordering on a necessity now. 

 

She leaves him a note on the table.  The last line reads: _Know that I loved you.  I'm sorry that it wasn't enough_.  Guilt for not appreciating what he gave up enough to stay, guilt for wanting _more_.

 

ii.

 

It's hardest to track on the busiest paths, they say, and that's true for animals and people, so it's the busiest paths that she takes, sticking to big cities and calling herself _Yelena Ivanova_.  Mal never finds her - she's not sure if it's a product of her efforts, or a lack of one from him.

 

She's heard of a man called the Darkling, a Grisha drenched in Night the way she is soaked in Day; she has heard of his plans to advance Grisha interests, by force, if necessary.  She wants to find him.

 

She had spent so much of her life running, though, that she doesn't know how to hunt.  She stumbles through her first few interactions in the first large town she comes across, raises a bit too much suspicion but saves herself through flirting and girlish charm (her skills were rusty, it seemed, but 15 years of charming the same man would do that).

 

In her second stop, Omsk, she fares better.  At least she thinks she does.

 

"There was word from the West in the town I just passed through," she asks the tavern girl where she sits down to eat, "of a Shadowbender.  I'm heading towards the coast - any news I should know before I'm on my way tomorrow?"

 

"Ain't heard of no Shadowbender here.  We're a proper tavern, we are, none of that Grisha witchcraft heresy here," the wench answers.

 

"Yes, yes, of course," Alina mollifies.  "but do you know where I might -" but the question dies as the girl briskly walks off.

 

Someone else had heard, though, and had answers and, as she heads to the stables to feed her horse, paid for by trading 2 of the beautiful fur pelts Mal had collected for her years ago, a voice speaks.

 

"Dangerous questions you ask."  Alina pivots, heart pounding, hand over chest to effect surprise and hide her alarm.  A man, handsome, with bronze hair and bronze skin, stood in the door of her stall, blocking her exit.  Her hand on her horse inches towards the knife she had stowed in the saddle.

 

"Dangerous times we live in," she gives him.  "My husband and I-"

 

"You have no husband.  Been watching you all night, been alone all that time."  Alina swallows, uncomfortable with how little she had paid attention to her surroundings.  Once, she sat with her back to the wall.  Rusty indeed.

 

She coughs.  "That's…creepy," she can't help it, it slips out without her wanting it to.  He smothers a smirk.  "I'm travelling alone, then, and would like to avoid trouble, where possible."

 

"Seems like you're looking for it, if you ask me."  Only a few words exchanged, but she doesn't peg him as the type to play with his food, and he was starting to annoy her, so she relaxes, just a fraction.

 

"I didn't, actually."  Her horse fidgets in the tension of the stall.  "Can I help you with something?"

 

"No."  The man appraises her.  "Just thought I'd warn a good religious woman that some questions should be asked with delicacy.  'Has the King ordered anything to be done about those Grisha?', you might try.  And if it's trouble you want to avoid, I'd stay away from Caryeva."  And he's gone, his words sitting a moment in her ear before registering.

 

"Caryeva, then?"  She asks into the night.  No one answers.

 

iii.

 

The road to Caryeva is long, and out of her way.  Not that she had a way in mind, other than that which followed whispers and hunted shadows, but she feels Caryeva to be out of the way, regardless.

 

When she arrives, she finds an inn and, after setting her bags in her room, sits with her back to the wall in the hall downstairs (rust eases with the oil of use, she knows).  The beautiful, red-headed serving maid brings her a plate.

 

"Has the King ordered anything to be done about those Grisha?"  she asks.  "I'm headed towards the coast, and I'd feel better to hear that he had."  The wench pauses, and Alina's pulse spikes in anticipation.  She fears not hearing the answer over the pounding of blood in her ears.

 

"The _Tsar_ ," the girl emphasizes, "d'you mean?"  Alina's heart lands back in its proper place with a crash that echoes with disappointment.  Her cheeks redden, she feels the hot flush of shame, but the girl's golden eyes are still on her, and Alina concedes.

 

"Yes, of course.  Has the _Tsar_ given any command?"

 

"No."

 

The next night, she heads to a different ale house, the Crimson Troika, and sits at the counter.  Women travelling alone aren't the most common, but in a country at war, husbands can be hard to come by, so she is left to her peace, sitting where she can surveille the rest of the room.  The barkeep takes her order and when he returns with a pint, she asks.

 

"Has the King ordered anything to be done about those Grisha?  I hear they're causing trouble in Os Kerva."  The barkeep looks at her a long second, melancholy face balanced well with fair hair, and Alina wonders if this detour will bear no fruit.

 

There is only one other public house in Caryeva, one with a reputation for activity less scrupulous than Alina wanted to associate with, but her options are running out and the longer she stays, the more times she asks the same question, the more suspicious she becomes.  She wonders if she regrets coming here: all news points to Os Kerva, and she might have been there by now if not for a strange comment from a strange man who approached her in a stable.  _This is how foolish girls get killed_ , she thinks to herself.  _This is how movements, religions, begin_ , another part of her whispers.

 

"Aye," the barkeep finally speaks.  "Trouble in Os Kerva - I've heard it too.  Can't say I've heard of anything being _done_ about it, but the King will do what's right for his people."  She isn't sure what to make of this: she doesn't feel like she's learned anything, but she also doesn't feel rejected, the way she had the previous night.  She nods her head at him and nurses her drink, straining to catch any snippet from the conversations around her that might set her on a new course.

 

On her walk home, she is kidnapped.

 

Or so it seemed, when a hand shot out from a dark alley, covering her mouth and pulling her in.  The barkeep and the maid from the inn look down at her seriously, and pull her farther from the road.

 

"You've been asking questions," the girl starts, " _a_ question, in particular.  Where did you hear that question?  Nod if you promise not to scream." Alina nods, and the hand over her mouth is removed.  Once again her blood roars in her ears, the sound of either _success_ or _imminent death_.

 

"I was in Omsk.  I asked for news of the Shadowbender, as I'm traveling to the coast and want to know what I can expect to find there.  Someone approached me, suggested that as a more 'delicate' wording."

 

"Someone?  Describe them."

 

"A man.  Tall, um, brown hair, brown eyes.  Handsome…brusque."

 

The two look at each other and nod.

 

"And what question are you really asking, _Yelena_?  Why come to Caryeva when Ivan suggested to stay away?"

 

Her heart was in her throat, preventing her from speaking.  Not that she had words, though: she needs time to process, to plot her course of action.

 

These were either Grisha, or people very intent on hurting them.  They knew her (fake) name, they knew that the man in Omsk had told her about Caryeva.  If she guesses wrong, if she suggests she is Grisha and they aren't, she is dead.  If she tries to talk her way out, pleading innocent and just trying to avoid trouble, and they are Grisha, she is probably also dead.  But she's come this far, not just since leaving Mal, but since first calling sun beams to her hand, and she is _tired_.

 

"I'm….searching."

 

"For what?  Why are you here?"  Alina takes a deep breath.

 

"For people like me."  The red-head nods, and her world goes black.

 

iv.

 

" _Bring her out of it._ "

 

She wakes up in a well-lit room, on a sofa.  Arranged in a half-circle around her are five people, all staring at her: the red-head, the barkeep, a beautiful girl with black hair and piercing blue eyes.  Another red-head, a man, with a cat on his lap.  A small woman with the features and coloring of the Shu.  Alina blinks, and clears her throat.  _Heartrender_ , she thinks.

 

"Alina Starkov," the black-haired girl speaks, and Alina starts upon hearing her real name, "you claim to have come to Caryeva looking for people like you.  You ask questions about a Shadowbender.  You are here to prove yourself to be one of us, to be what you claim.  I will be clear: if you do not, you will not leave this room alive.  Your body will be found in an alley, victim of the darker hearts of men, and no one will mourn you."  She paused.  "You wanted to find Grisha.  You now have the undivided attention of five."

 

She is not restrained, she notices, but she is surrounded.  There would be no escape.

 

"How did you-" she begins, wants to ask how they know her, how they found each other, and _she has so so many other questions_ but - one thing at a time.  "I'm looking for those like me, yes, but I'm looking also for the Shadowbender.  I can't…I have little control over my power: it's only ever come out when I'm in pain.  I need someone to teach me.  So hurt me if you have to; try to kill me if you don't believe me.  You'll see."

 

After a moment, the man with the cat breaks his silence.  "So you're a summoner, then? Wind, water or fire?"  _Inferni_ , if the way he lingered on the final word was any indication.

 

"Light."

 

"No one controls light," the Shu woman says.  Her words are like falling through thin ice into a lake you were sure was frozen solid.  She hadn't met anyone else who could control light, but she had also only met about 15 other Grisha in her life.  _Abandoned_ flitted through her thoughts.  _Alone_.  _Homeless_.

 

"That's what they said about the shadows, until the Darkling proved them wrong," the barmaid counters.  "Give her a chance."  She looked at Alina, "I know how it feels, to keep the power locked up.  It's been tamped down, told to stay quiet, because it's dangerous.  You need to let that go - as Zoya said, if you are what you claim, we will not hurt you.

 

"Your power isn't something that chooses when to come and when to stay hidden.  You call and it answers, every time.  You just have to call properly: without fear, without pretense, but with authority.  Before we move on to forcing your hand, why don't you try."

 

Eyes closed , she searches for the light, searches for that rush of sureness and certainty she's felt every time her power manifests.  It's not there.  She pushes farther, breathing deep and centering herself.  _Call properly_ , but what does mean?  _Let the fear go_.  She wonders if she should apologize to it, like a kicked pet, but decides that's a bit ridiculous.

 

There is a door, however, in her heart or mind or that space in between where she locks herself up, that she had always shied away from but _(let the fear go)_ now approaches.  It is black, and massive, but opens at the mere touch of her hand.  Inside is a candle, just barely smoldering in the otherwise dark room.  She leans forward and tries blowing gently on wick, hoping to see into the back corners, to see what holds her back, but it fades from red to black, and she stops.  She cups her hands around it, instead, trying to concentrate every last bit of heat around the wick and, while the color improves, it's not enough.  It doesn't catch.

 

A sharp sting in her arm, though, has it roaring to life and spitting sparks.  A multitude of other candles sitting on the floor catch and light, illuminating the far reaches of the room.  There are people, there, and her heart beats staccato: the first Fjerdan who almost killed her, members of the search party that wanted to capture her, Mal.  All people she associated with fear of her power.  They warranted her fear, to be certain, but they had no place in this room.  They smothered the light, and she wouldn't stand for it any longer.

 

When she opens her eyes, her arm is bleeding but she holds a miniature sun in her hands.  The five Grisha around her only stare.

 

v.

 

She later learns that Zoya became impatient after only 5 minutes, and cut her arm to "speed the process up".  Later, Zoya tells her she is plain and unambitious.  Later, she tells Zoya she is an arrogant cow.

 

Zoya and Alina do not get along.

 

vi.

 

Genya meets Alina outside the small farm she is making a delivery to.  The horse-drawn cart carries hay from the fields surrounding the village, and 3 Shu Han Grisha from the forest beyond them.

 

It has been months since she first came to Caryeva, and she is happier than she has ever been, she thinks.  She tries to train with the other Summoners, though find that little she does helps her control, but she finds herself changing in light of exercising her powers.  She sleeps better, eats better, fills out in a way that should have happened 20 years ago.  The Darkling is not here, though Alina feels naïve for suspecting that he would be.  Ivan had sent her to the gatekeepers of his organization; it was protocol, she figured, as she'd taken part in trials similar to her own.

 

Some Grisha pass their tests, and are sent where they were most needed; no others are invited to stay, though.  Some pretenders fail, and are killed.  They were not cruel, these executions, nothing long and drawn out, as was often done to Grisha who fell into the wrong hands.  She marks that as a fundamental difference between them and their oppressors, and tells herself that the imposters' deaths are necessary, not based in fear and superstition.

 

"Ivan is here." Unexpected; Ivan frequently sends letters, but hadn't yet visited the town.  "He's waiting for you at the Crimson Troika.  I'll settle these three in."

 

Fedyor unlocks the small room off the back of the bar.  The bronzed man with chestnut curls she met so long ago sits, waiting.

 

"I see you didn't follow my advice," he smirks.

 

"I think I did exactly as you advised me," she retorts.  "Make any more women supremely uncomfortable lately?"

 

"Many.  Some you may have met, some may have lost heart on the way."  Ivan is a Heartrender, she'd been told; the joke wasn't lost on her, she just didn't find it funny.

 

"Why are you here, Ivan?"  The last time she saw him, she had only the airs of confidence.  Now, she has a backbone fortified with experience and sunlight in her hands.  He had not sent her to the Darkling, as he may have suggested, but she is glad he sent her here all the same.

 

"I'm told you summon light, Alina.  Show me."  She complies, still eager to prove herself worthy to those who understand her, still eager to prove it to _herself_.  The candles in the room flicker and lean in as she summons a small orb.  He stares, and breathes out with contemplation,

 

"So it's true."  His eyes snap to meet hers.  "Pack your things.  We leave tonight."

 

"But-"

 

"You wanted to meet the Shadowbender, Alina?  Congratulations, now he wants to meet you.  Pack your things, bring your horse, we leave tonight.  I do not advise arguing."  His tone cut through the protest on her lips; she nods her head, and leaves to prepare.

 

vii.

 

The journey passed in mostly uncomfortable silence.  They move quickly, ride hard, follow roads Alina recognized as leading back to Omsk.  Ivan is not talkative, Alina learns quickly.

 

She is set up at the same inn she had stayed at, and eats at the 'proper tavern' where Ivan had cornered her.  It is not lost on her, of course, that she had been so close to her original target when she started out here.

 

She is cornered again as she settles her horse in for the night.  He deserves the rest: it's a wonder he's still in such fine shape after the haste of their travel.

 

"Hello Ivan," she greets, picking out muck from her horse's hooves.  He's standing where he was the first time, more serious than she'd seen him before.  No smirk dances on his lips now.

 

"No questions tonight?" He asks.

 

"I've learned to be patient," she answers, "and to know when my questions won't be answered.  No use calling attention to myself needlessly."

 

"You've learnt some, then."

 

"I've learnt a great deal.  I think I have you to thank for that."  Ivan nods and, when she's done, leads her out.  She figures this is a question that will answer itself, and so doesn't ask.

 

He takes her first to a different inn, then through a backdoor to a servant's staircase.  They exit into the hallway on the third floor and rap on a door.  It opens, and they enter.

 

It was an unassuming door leading to an unassuming room, floored with well-worn wood, filled with well-worn furniture, occupied by well-worn people.  There are three, one of whom had opened the door, one of whom stood with his back to the newcomers.  The two she could see are attractive, Alina notices, but tired: they have the same glow as the Grisha she knew in Caryeva, as she was beginning to recognize in herself, but the same haunted expression as those she picked up from Shu Han.  These are hunted men.

 

" _Da, moi soverenyi_ ," one says as two bow, and she is left in the room with Ivan and a man leaning over a table.

 

" _Moi soverenyi_ ," Ivan says, "the Sun Summoner."  The Darkling, for who else could this be, turns around.

 

She wishes she could capture that moment in her mind.  Not just the way he looks (which is very good, she admits to herself - it's been a long time since Mal) but the emotions he invokes, the trains of thought he sets off in her.

 

He wears the clothes of a trader, looks so…normal.  But also not - he looks like he's trying to look normal, she settles on.  He holds himself with the airs of a _Tsar_ , the confidence of a general and, when he looks at her as appraisingly as he does now, the charms of a prince.  She guesses she expected him dressed in sable, sitting on a throne, but then thinks that true kings don't need to proclaim that they are so.  And this man, she is sure to her bones, was born to rule.

 

With the smooth planes of his face unblemished, and his eyes as sharp as snowmelt over river rock, this thought does something to her.  She'll dwell on it later.

 

She's heard of the great and terrible things he has done, and know she should be scared.  But when you've almost died the number of times she has, you gain perspective.  She won't blindly commit to this man, with empty courtesies and titles she does not yet believe.  Her loyalty must be earned. She stays silent and waits for him to speak first.

 

"Show me," he finally says.

 

She does, and when her comfortable sphere of sunshine rests in her palm, he closes the distance between them and cups her hands in his.  The sensation of his shadows running over her skin is like nothing she's felt before: slightly cool, whisper soft, they leave her wondering if it she imagined them.

 

But it's nothing compared to the frissons of power, of surety, that she feels coursing through her from the skin-on-skin contact.  She closes her eyes and reopens them to shadows dancing along the outer rim of her ball of light.  Her concentration waivers and the light dissipates.  She looks up at him.  He is staring at her with thinly veiled want and her breath catches before she thinks that it must be desire for her powers, for how she can be put into play on his chessboard ( _maybe, soon, it will be for her, too_ ).  He looks at her like destiny.  She warns him that she is not what he thinks she is.

 

"I need help controlling it.  I need to learn."  She swallows.  "I need someone to show me my place in all this." His nod is a whisper in return.  His hands turn and fold over her own, and her heart stutters.  She blames Ivan.

 

"I'm so glad you came to me, Alina.  I've been waiting a long time for you.  You and I are going to change the world."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based off the idea of what would happen if Alina was born in a time before Grisha were accepted in Ravka, when the Darkling was trying to change things?
> 
> There are Harry Potter, GoT and Star Wars easter eggs, if you care to find them.
> 
> If you enjoy the stories, and have an idea of your own, I'm open to taking prompts! Even if it's just a word.


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